Helping ELLs and ALL Children: Age-Appropriate Comprehensible Input

How can we help our ELLs and even our young children who may not have the background knowledge to understand the contents of a book we are reading? We can use gestures, pictures, objects, and even videos to help children understand the content of a book or even our directions. 

We find that gestures are so important. Here are a few examples of helpful actions:

• Want children to listen? Be sure to cup your hand over your ear. 
• Want children to be quieter? Put your finger over your lips.
• Want children to think or wonder about something? Point to your head.

As you can imagine, it is also helpful to include appropriate facial expressions with these gestures. Look puzzled or happy. These facial expressions can align with a book character's feelings, too. They are helpful in so many ways.

If you are reading a book about a dog, be sure to show pictures. If you are reading about someone running, you can act this out or even have children do this. Talking about rain? Use a rain stick to get children involved. Want children to look closer at something? Wear BIG glasses! It's fun, too! 

Gestures, facial expressions, body language, pictures, objects...all of these are helpful examples of comprehensible input that help all of the children in our class to understand the language of school. 

Stay tuned next week for more on comprehensible input.

Standards Alignment:
NAEYC - 2.D.01 & 03.
Head Start - VIII.A. & B.